Reform the research and development of new products on the pesticide supply side

Original question: How to change the supply side of pesticide industry?

R & D should be new to win the service to be more grounded

R & D innovation is an important part of the supply-side reform of pesticide industry. Photographe: Zhang Tao

At present, China's pesticide industry is in a period of low growth, the boom of the industry is declining, the growth of market demand is slowing down, the rigid overcapacity of most products is excessive, and the disorderly homogeneous competition is intensified, which causes the industry to enter an era of low profit. In addition, the goal of zero growth in pesticide use and the new changes in the market environment have forced the supply-side reform of the pesticide industry. How should the supply side be changed? How can we improve competitiveness? Let's listen to the insights of industry insiders.

Pesticide Supply-side Reform Imperative

In recent years, the pesticide market has appeared in a small year, not because of insufficient demand, but because there are too many pesticide products that should not be produced, and the supply of pesticide products needed for agricultural production is insufficient. Therefore, the reform of pesticide supply side is imperative, which has become the consensus in the industry.

Li Zhonghua, Secretary-General of China Pesticide Industry Association, pointed out that the downward pressure of domestic economy is increasing constantly, enterprises are facing great pressure on environmental protection and safety, pesticide industry overcapacity, homogeneous competition contradiction is increasingly prominent, pesticide zero growth target put forward by Ministry of Agriculture last year, multinational companies continue to expand territory in China, product promotion efforts continue to increase, all kinds of adverse factors lead to the general decline of industry benefits in 2015.

"In the current pesticide market, on the one hand, the competition for homogeneous products with the same effective ingredients is increasingly fierce or even white-hot, and many varieties are no longer profitable; on the other hand, some small crops are difficult to obtain or even have no drugs available, resulting in indiscriminate use and abuse of drugs in some places." Deng Zhaoli, general manager of Hunan Meili Environmental Ecology Co., Ltd., pointed out that this contradiction should cause pesticide enterprises to attach great importance to it. Product research and development must be close to market needs. Only products needed by the market can have vitality.

"Zero growth in pesticide use has become a trend in the development of the industry, and to truly achieve this goal, the role of pesticide companies is indispensable." The new situation of modern agricultural development puts forward higher requirements for the production and operation of pesticide production enterprises, and puts forward urgent requirements for the adjustment of product structure of production enterprises." Yang Fuchu, director of plant protection and plant inspection station in Hunan Province, pointed out that to achieve "zero growth" in use means to improve product quality and quality and produce new high-efficiency and low-risk pesticides. This requires pesticide manufacturers to accelerate the development of high-tech products, eliminate backward production capacity, accelerate the cultivation of new strategic growth points, and vigorously develop high-efficiency and low-risk pesticides, integrated pesticide and fertilizer products, biological pesticides, etc.

Agrochemical services must be more grounded

The pesticide market has changed from the previous "what to sell" to the independent choice of growers, and pesticide enterprises have become the selected objects. In addition to providing good products, improving service capabilities has also become a lesson that enterprises must pay attention to.

Liu Jie, secretary-general of Hunan Province Association for Specialized Prevention and Control of Crop Diseases and Pests, said that removing intermediate circulation links, developing customized pesticide products, reducing marketing costs of production enterprises and procurement costs of growers, and realizing specialization, automation, informatization and transparency of sales process are the inherent requirements and inevitable trends of pesticide sales. One of the most effective ways is to realize the connection between production and demand. On the one hand, scientific use technology can be directly transmitted to growers, on the other hand, production can be determined by sales and circulation costs can be reduced.

Li Weiguo, chairman of Guangxi Pastoral Biochemical Co., Ltd., said that in view of the current problems such as low pesticide application efficiency, poor control effect and difficult people to find, the company has realized the successful transformation of "from selling pesticides to farmers to spraying pesticides to farmers 'fields". In recent years, more than 500 pesticide application teams have been set up nationwide, with a service area of more than 10 million mu, effectively expanding market space from plant protection services.

"Whoever can provide better and more comprehensive services to farmers will be the winner." Shen Qunbin, general manager of Hunan Jindi Agricultural Materials Co., Ltd., said that the transformation of agricultural materials dealers to service providers is the general trend. To build service-oriented enterprises and dealers, the premise is to achieve fine service and more professional technology. To this end, Jindi Company and pesticide production enterprises jointly built an "agrochemical service center" to build a four-level agrochemical service platform of "expert team, full-time agrochemical team of the company, first-line agrochemical team of the company and county-level agricultural technical expert team". Through professional agrochemical services such as training lectures, test demonstrations and on-site guidance, the products, technologies and services are placed in villages and households, so as to solve the "last kilometer" problem of agricultural science and technology serving agriculture, and truly realize multi-win in production and marketing.

"At present, more than 60% of the company's profits come from agrochemical services, and the profits from pesticide production only account for 30% of the company's total profits." Huang Anhui, general manager of Hunan Wanjiafeng Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out that the fundamental way out for pesticide enterprises lies in accelerating innovation of agrochemical service methods, being a provider of overall agricultural solutions, improving the level of agrochemical services, guiding farmers to use drugs scientifically, and winning development space through "products + services" under the new requirements of "zero growth".

Homogeneous competition is better than winning with new

For pesticide industry, product R & D and innovation are the key to supply-side reform, which is also a weakness of domestic pesticide enterprises, especially requiring great efforts. With the increasingly strict requirements of safety and environmental protection, pesticide products with green efficiency, novel mechanism of action and market segmentation demand will usher in greater development space.

Fan Kuncheng, deputy general manager of Zhejiang Xinnong Chemical Co., Ltd., said that pesticide enterprises must promote the transformation from production of homogeneous products to personalized and characteristic production, so as to provide new market space for enterprise development.

"The weed area of farmland in China increased by more than 100 million mu from 2010 to 2014. This is due to the single use of herbicides, farming systems and other factors, resulting in changes in the grass form of farmland weeds, resistant weeds developed rapidly, and resistant weed species will increase rapidly in the future. Paraquat, in particular, is now banned and there is an urgent need for herbicides with new mechanisms of action." Tang Huilian, deputy director of Hunan Province Plant Protection and Plant Inspection Station, pointed out that the product research and development of pesticide production enterprises must win with new products. It is better to develop personalized and characteristic products with independent intellectual property rights than to develop homogeneous products without making money at a low price. Pesticide enterprises must dare to change the herd mentality that is longer than imitation and shorter than innovation. Only with one move can they eat all over the world.

Many enterprises have tasted the sweetness of independent innovation. Huang Anhui, general manager of Hunan Wanjiafeng Technology Co., Ltd., said that in recent years, the rapid development of the company benefited from the copper pine ester series products with independent intellectual property rights, which not only became the company's largest brand product, but also became the company's leading product for anti-risk and profit protection. In recent years, Guangxi Pastoral Biochemical Co., Ltd. has established a research and development team for special anti-aircraft agents, and the annual growth rate of special anti-aircraft agents produced by Guangxi Pastoral Biochemical Co., Ltd. in Hunan is as high as 50%.

Integration of seed, fertilizer, medicine and machinery is a trend

Modern agricultural production not only needs high quality and low price agricultural materials products, but also needs the whole process service from planting to harvest. The deep integration trend of seed, fertilizer, pesticide, agricultural machinery and other industries is increasingly obvious.

In 2015, Guangxi Pastoral Company tried to mobilize dealers to transform into a pesticide spraying team. In addition to pesticide spraying, the pesticide spraying team also provided rice seedling raising, transplanting service and harvesting and drying operation according to the time difference of rice planting in different places. In this way, farmers can reduce the cost of medication, and do not need to purchase seedling raising equipment, rice transplanter, harvester, dryer and other agricultural machinery, agricultural production costs are greatly reduced, and for the pesticide team, can realize the full utilization of agricultural machinery equipment and maximize the benefits.